The Accidental Siren (7 page)

“What.”

“You wore diapers ‘til you were eight,
right?”

Whit’s face crumpled into an angry snarl.
“They fixed that.
And if you tell anybody–”

“I think something’s wrong with me.”

He grabbed his wheels and jerked back. “What?
What happened?”

I turned over and pressed my face in my
pillow.

“James?” he said. “What the heck
happened?”

“Last night,” I said. “I wet the stinkin’
bed.”

* * *

Saturday.

Dad caught me on the way to the mailbox and
informed me that the USPS never ships on weekends.
Crap!
Our
film was probably sittin’ on a warehouse shelf like the Ark at the
end of
Raiders
. He assured me it would arrive on Monday,
then drove me to Whit’s house and dropped me off.

We wasted no time devising an excuse to “go
for a stroll,” then took that stroll directly to the big blue
mailbox across the street from Ms. Grisham’s house.

“I don’t see Mara,” Whit said.

“Shh.”

“Think she’s inside? It doesn’t look that
scary. Maybe you should ring the bell. Were all those cars here
before?”

“Calm down. No, the driveway was empty.”

“Who are all those people? Looks like
old-folks cars. Ring the bell. Lemme see if this girl’s as hot as
you say.”

“I never said ‘hot.’”

“Prettyyy, then.”

“Beautiful.”

Whit pulled two candy bars from his backpack.
“Here,” he said. “For takin’ me with.”

I considered the chocolate, then held up my
hand. “No thanks.”

“Wouldja look at that? James Parker...
turnin’ down food! I do declare!”

“
Shh! Shut up!”

For a split second I thought the music was
another realistic echo of “Amazing Grace,” but it was a different
song and it was coming from the house.

My soul was complete.

“O God of loveliness,

O Lord of Heaven above

How worthy to possess

My hearts devoted love.”

CRASH!

I looked left. Whit was belly down. His chair
was on its side.

I abandoned my cover, flipped the chair to
its wheels, then darted to Whit. I slipped my arms beneath his pits
and pulled him back to his seat. “Are you okay?”

“Listen!” he said.

“So sweet Thy Countenance,

So gracious to behold

That one, one only glance

To me were bliss untold.”

The song finished and the house expelled a
round of muffled applause that reminded me of locust wings. I
pulled Whit back behind the mailbox and peeked over the hump.

“
You were right,”
he said.

“About what?”

“
Her.”

I raised my hand to shield the sun. A minute
later the front door clicked three times, opened, and spewed a
dandy parade of canes, walkers, floral print, society hats with
sagging brims, and uniform bibles with purple leather covers. The
women filtered onto the grass and dabbed their eyes with hankies.
Leading the gaggle was Ms. Grisham, less curmudgeonly than the
night we met, basking in hugs and handshakes and nods of approval
from her blubbering flock of groupies.

“I don’t see Mara!” Whit said.

“She’ll prolly stay inside. What do those
pins say?”

“Pins?”

“On their lapels.”

“I can’t read ‘em from here.”

“Go check.”

“You go check!”

“Ms. Grisham doesn’t know you. Just roll down
the sidewalk and find out where those ladies are from.”

Whit accepted the challenge. He wheeled away
toward the dead end of the cul-de-sac, followed the curve by the
woods, then slid past the house as the women worked their keys into
the locks of their cars. No one paid the boy any attention except
Ms. Grisham; she watched the rolling rodent like an owl with yellow
eyes and a detached neck.

Whit didn’t look back, but scooted along with
surprising self-control.

When the women were gone and Ms. Grisham was
back inside, I left the mailbox and ran to catch up. “Well?” I
asked.

“The pins were all the same,” he replied.
“’The Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Dunes, League of Catholic
Women.’”

“Geez o’ peets!” I said. “How’d you remember
all that?”

Whit grabbed my wrist.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I wanna meet her, James.” He pulled me
closer. “I wanna meet that girl.”

* * *

Sunday.

Political correctness didn’t exist in 1994.
Livy was “black,” Whitney was “handicapped,” Danny B. was
“deformed,” and my new chum Dominique was “Mexican” even though his
parents were from Puerto Rico. If Dom had been an alter boy ten
years later, the PC Police would call him an “alter
server
.”

He was a tiny boy with a smooth face and a
gap between every tooth. He looked seven years old but swore he was
ten. “I figured it out last year,” he told me in the opulent
seclusion of the cathedral’s cry room. “There’s a vent above the
second stall in the boy’s bathroom–”

“You crawl through the vents?”

“Heck no! They’re too small. But one day I’m
hangin’ a rat in that stall and I hear voices, so I finish up and
stand on the seat. And what do I hear?
Mrs. Crenshaw is
confessing her sins
. She’s tellin’ Father Stevenson how she got
bit by a snake in the Walmart garden center–which is already big
gossip in the congregation–and that
she
was the one who put
the snake in the rosemary plant and jabbed it ‘til it bit her.”

“Why would somebody do that?”

“To sue the pants off Walmart!”

“What does this hafta do with–”

“It’s hard to stand on the toilet and I can
only hear every other word, so when Mara came along–” Dominique
paused and traced a cross on his chest, “–I figured she’d hafta
confess eventually, right? So I get the idea to use my super-sonic
listening gun that came with the science kit I got for my birthday.
I sneak it in under my robe, then stand on the toilet and push the
microphone way back in the vent, then I put on the headphones and
pretend like I’m peeing. And boy oh boy, I can hear it all! Just
like I’m right beside ‘em in the confessional.”

“Did you hear Mara?”

“It’s two months before she makes a
confession on a Sunday that I’m serving. But then I see Ms. Grisham
shove her in that box with Father Stevenson so I hang up my robe,
hook up my super-sonic hearing gun, and listen to the whole
sha-bang.”

“Un-stinkin’-believable,” I said. Although my
fairytale was still on hold, I had convinced my parents
that–whenever I found a new camera–I would need a scene in a
medieval church. On the first Sunday of summer vacation, Dad
dropped me off at The Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Dunes on his
way to morning coffee.

It was imperative that Mara didn’t catch me
spying–I needed to distinguish myself from the
real
zombies–so I had ducked behind a plaster column and eyed her from
the back of the church. The girl sat in the sagging crook of Ms.
Grisham’s arm in the first row. She wore an ivory gown with an
ivory sash, and her hair was crimped in rosy waves that tickled the
hymnal on the back of her pew. Behind her, a boy leaned forward and
sniffed her neck.

I first noticed Dominique as he shuffled down
the center isle in a delicate procession of boys in white robes.
Some held brass spears with candles and crosses; Dom swung a
smoking bowl from silver chains like a pendulum. They all wore
wooden crosses around their necks and red sashes over their
shoulders.

The congregation watched the parade in
silence.

As the altar boys approached the front of the
sanctuary, the little Mexican began to fall out of sync. He veered
to the left and his fancy bowl began to swing faster and faster in
a whirl of white smoke. He swayed right to rejoin the procession,
but his head was turned and tilted. I followed his eye-line across
the church; sure enough, he was fixated on the little girl in the
first pew.

The other boys lifted their feet for the two
steps up to the pulpit, but Dominique–too distracted to
notice–bumped his toes into the bottom step, dropped his bowl with
a clang and puff of soot, and knocked over the kid with the
cross.

Somewhere in the frazzle that followed, Mara
and Ms. Grisham made their escape.

When Mass was over, I ran outside, found Dad
waiting in his car, and asked for ten more minutes to look around.
Being a tremendous supporter of the arts, he agreed.

Back in the sanctuary, the clumsy delinquent
was scrubbing dust and incense from the burn holes in the carpet.
To get his attention, I whispered a password that would unlock
countless secrets from tight-lipped boys:
Mara.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this stuff.” Dom
continued while glancing nervously around the empty cry room. “None
of the other boys like this job, but
I do.
And if I get
busted twice in one Sunday, I’m gone.”

“There’s nobody here. And I won’t tell a
soul.”

“Cross your heart?”

“And hope to die, stick a needle in my–”

“I trust you.” He lowered his voice. “So I’m
sitting on the pot listening to Mara and Father Stevenson.” He
crossed himself again. “She tells him that she has bad thoughts
about her aunt, but that she prays for her every night.”

“Ms. Grisham...”

“Yeah. I have bad thoughts about her too.
She’s always got Mara–” (another cross) “–under her ugly arm, and
whenever Mara–” (another cross) “–talks to a priest, that geezery
old lady paces back and forth outside the confessional.”

“Then what happened?”

“So Father Stevenson tells Mara–” (another
cross) “–that her aunt means well, but that the old bat isn’t
worthy of raising such a special Little Madonna.”

“Madonna?” I asked and imagined Mara sticking
pointy birthday hats under her shirt.

“Our Holy Mother.”

“Oh.”

“Then he tells her that Mary was only a few
years older when she gave birth to Christ.”

“What a weirdo.”

“Mara–” (another cross) “–says she’s been
having bad thoughts about boys too. Father Stevenson asks if
they’re wrathful thoughts, or a different kind of bad. She says she
doesn’t know... they’re just bad. So then he asks, ‘Is it the same
as the last time you had these thoughts? With Trevor?’ and she
says, ‘No Father, I don’t think so.’ Then he tells her that her
aunt is as crazy as a naked blue jay and that she’s a perfect child
who doesn’t need absolution.”

“So what?”

“So that never happens! I’m in catechism so I
know a thing or two about the Good Book. It teaches that everybody
does bad things once in a while. Heck, Mrs. Crenshaw got twenty
Hail Mary’s for gettin’ bit by that snake.”

“Geez.”

“Don’t blaspheme.”

“Huh?”

“So when Mara’s finally done–” (another
cross) “–Ms. Grisham steps in–”

“Oh boy!”

“–and she totally skips the whole
‘Bless-me-Father-for-I-have sinned’ part and flat-out calls Mara a
demon!” (another cross).

“A demon? Why?”

Dom inched closer. “There’s somethin’ else
strange goin’ on.”

“What?” I whispered.

“Ms. Grisham had that pretty little girl
baptized
three times
.”

“Is that bad?”

“You’re only supposeda be baptized once! But
Father Stevenson approved it and even performed every one of
them.”

“Weird...”

“So Ms. Grisham’s in there callin’ my girl a
demon; says the baptisms are wearing off and that she might need a
fourth. Father says that’s not why we get baptized. Grisham says
her niece is obstinate. Father says Christ was obstinate too and
that confession is a time to admit
your own
sins and not the
sins of others. Then–this is the best part–he sends the witch home
with
fifty
Hail Marys.”

“
James Parker!”
My Dad’s sanctimonious
voice echoed through the chambers.

“Crap,” I said. “Looks like I gotta
bolt.”

“No prob. I gotta get that carpet clean if I
ever wanna carry another thurible.”

“
James!”

“Coming Dad!” I shouted. I stood up, then
turned back for my final question. “Hey, Dom.”

“Yeah?”

“Why do you make that cross on your chest
every time you say her name?”

He looked at me with lovesick eyes. “’Cause
every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.”

* * *

Monday.

When boys are twelve, phrases like “She’s not
my aunt, she just wants me to call her that,” don’t stand out as
particularly odd. Three baptisms and “Little Madonna” sounded
strange, but not
perverse
and certainly not
dangerous
. I blame part of my naiveté on my age, part on the
era. Either way, our brief tree-top dialogue and my conversation
with the alter boy churned for days before warning signs registered
in my developing brain. If Ms. Grisham wasn’t Mara’s mother, aunt,
or grandma, then who was she? If Mara was adopted, surely she’d
call the woman “Mom” like Livy did. And if she was a foster kid,
she wouldn’t be living with the same woman for so many years.

Something was very wrong.

Last night I dreamt that Mara was in my
bedroom. She was wearing the same footie pajamas from the evening
we met, but her hair was crimped like it was in church. My room
became a snow globe of slow-drifting feathers and my ceiling’s
glow-in-the-dark galaxy dissolved into a holy dusting of Milky Way
stars. Mara watched them, her head against my forearm, cuddled
against me with fuzzy limbs brushing against my skin.

I woke up wet for the second time in a week,
then snuck another load of laundry to baptize my sticky shame in a
barrel of tumbling bubbles.

If Ms. Grisham didn’t have legal custody of
Mara, that was a humungous problem... but maybe it was a problem
that I could use to my advantage.